Fragments of Noir

Sunday, 19 April 2026

Dark Femmes #28

Myung-Sook - The Housemaid (1960)

Rachael - Blade Runner

Sherry Peatty - The Killing

Natalie Bellsario - The Cooler

Racquel Serrano - Kneeling Goddess

Abigail Martin - Christmas Holiday

Bridget Gregory - Last Seduction

Annie Laurie Starr - Gun Crazy

Belle - Belle et Bete

Rita/Camilla Rhodes - Mulholland Drive

Sheila Bennet - Killer That Stalked New York

Carol Lakewood Morton - This World, Then the Fireworks

Marsha Mitchell - Storm Warning

Claire Quimby - Tension

Mona Demarkov - Romeo Bleeding

Carol Richman - Phantom Lady

Helene Desvallees - The Unfaithful Wife

Kathie Moffat - Out of the Past

The system worked because felons and misdemeanants plead guilty most of the time and did not file nuisance appeals routinely. The system worked because pre-breakdown jail time was doable. Criminals were pre-psychologized. They accepted authority. They knew they were lowlife scum because they saw it on TV and read it in the papers. They were locked into a rigged game. Authority usually won.

My Dark Places
James Ellroy
1996

Saturday, 18 April 2026

His Rope

Eddie Coyle is a small-time loser at the end of his rope, but the marvelous thing about Mitchum is that he doesn't play him as a groveling, uncourageous man. He imparts to the role a quiet dignity the character in the book lacked. I think Mitchum radiates a genuine presence. Above all, you can say about Mitchum that he is.

excerpt from
Robert Mitchum : The Last Celluloid Desperado
Grover Lewis
Rolling Stone - 1973

image
Friends of Eddie Coyle
Peter Yates
1973

Lost Life

Lost Life
(Pepper)
Art Pepper

Friday, 17 April 2026

A State of Affairs

Chinatown connotes color and in a larger sense the hidden twoness of things. It is both a place and a state of affairs, part of Los Angeles and Los Angeles itself. At the end, we learn that Noah Cross "owns the police", that the cover-up Gittes detested in Chinatown extends all over. To paraphrase Marlowe's Mephistopheles ; Why this is Chinatown, nor am i out of it.